The House Always Wins

Every time I think of Pak­istan crick­et and match-fix­ing, I am remind­ed of that glo­ri­ous com­e­dy series, Alif Noon. In it, two polar-oppo­site friends become con artists with hilar­i­ous con­se­quences. As with Alann and Nan­na, the leads of the show, our crick­eters seem to have turned bungling into an art form. There are on aver­age 600 legal deliv­er­ies to throw a crick­et match with­out arous­ing sus­pi­cion. These gents, how­ev­er, lose the plot in such obvi­ous clumps that it is hard to buy the ‘bad luck today’ argu­ment.

Their inabil­i­ty to pace them­selves towards defeat is just slop­py. After a while the pro­ces­sion of wick­ets, bad balls or missed catch­es become a dead give­away to even the mild­ly curi­ous. What’s the rush? Implod­ing spec­tac­u­lar­ly can’t be good for busi­ness in the long run. Things of a ‘fix­ing’ nature must be kept under wraps with dis­ci­pline so mon­ey keeps being made. Where­as mil­lions of dol­lars have been fun­neled abroad by cor­rupt politi­cians with lit­tle trace, their crick­et­ing coun­ter­parts seem unable to get paid under the table with­out attract­ing atten­tion.

Moin Khan has reached back home from the Antipodes. The chief selec­tor of the Green Shirts found him­self pho­tographed in a Christchurch casi­no before the West Indies rout. With the Awaam froth­ing mad over the India defeat, he chose to be seen at the one place that would scream ‘fix­ing’. Of course the Pak­istan Crick­et Board (PCB) is now inves­ti­gat­ing whether ‘din­ner’ or indeed ‘keep­ing an eye on the boys’ are plau­si­ble enough rea­sons. It is like­ly we’re all over­re­act­ing here, but ugly innu­en­do spreads fast when­ev­er Pak­istani crick­eters play below their poten­tial.

Any gam­bler worth his debts will tell you kar­ma has big fangs. Shahid Afri­di and fel­low media dar­lings, Umar Akmal and Ahmed Shahzad, bet on con­fronting field­ing coach Grant Luden with­out con­se­quences. Luden tried to rec­ti­fy the poor field­ing dis­play against India with the sim­plest of solu­tions, more hard work. Some­how this irked the trio into say­ing unhealthy things that led to his res­ig­na­tion, but the PCB inter­vened to smooth things over. Then in the West Indies game, kar­ma bit back big time. Shahid Afri­di dropped sit­ters, Umar Akmal stayed abysmal, and Ahmed Shahzad came and went.

It is not sur­pris­ing that Pak­istani crick­eters look down on career coach­es. After all, how can some­one who hasn’t played at the top tell them any bet­ter? Every for­mer inter­na­tion­al turned crick­et pun­dit sup­ports the view, lament­ing the loss of for­eign exchange with­out sat­is­fac­to­ry out­put. Flair and sheer tal­ent, they say, is what made Pak­istan great. For exam­ple, is there a bet­ter bowl­ing coach in the world than Waqar You­nis? On the evi­dence of recent results prob­a­bly half the plan­et. The rea­son is Waqar was a genius. Genius­es instinc­tive­ly know how to make things hap­pen, while mere mor­tals graft. It is the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry that requires struc­tured coach­ing, or else they become frus­trat­ed.

Speak­ing of frus­tra­tions, please be upstand­ing to hon­or the moti­va­tion­al pil­lars of Pak­istan crick­et, head coach Waqar You­nis (again) and PCB reg­u­lar Najam Sethi. Every­one wants the crick­et team to man-up men­tal­ly, yet the very peo­ple who should have their backs have turned and walked away. Both mess cre­ators – You­nis & Sethi have repeat­ed­ly warned the nation not to expect too much from ‘the boys’ because, well, they’re not all that good, are they? Our reg­u­lar bowlers are injured, the bats­men are inex­pe­ri­enced, there’s too much pub­lic pres­sure.

In ancient Samu­rai Japan, men fac­ing dis­hon­or would dis­em­bow­el them­selves. At the PCB, they lean back on plush swiv­el chairs and make excus­es. No one talks about the things that can be con­trolled, like the play­ing eleven. The World Cup squad is a team of spe­cial­ists that plays bits-and-pieces crick­et. The open­ing pair of Ahmed Shahzad and Nasir Jamshed is accom­plished fly swat­ters but aver­age new ball tech­ni­cians. Our ‘star’ all-rounder Shahid Afri­di does bet­ter star­ring turns in TV com­mer­cials than on the field. You­nis Khan, lead­en of foot and short on luck, is pro­mot­ed up the order when what he real­ly needs is to be paired with tail-enders. Real­iz­ing he has a bet­ter cov­er dri­ve might bring some of that self-con­fi­dence back.

At the end of the day, we need to under­stand the world won’t stop spin­ning if Pak­istan can’t make the quar­ter­fi­nals. Our desire to have the nation­al crick­et team be a col­lec­tive ves­sel of hon­or is just bad for blood pres­sure. Since we’re con­tent with the sur­round­ing medi­oc­rity on a dai­ly basis, why expect 15 indi­vid­u­als cut from the same cloth to be any dif­fer­ent? Demand­ing virtues like the pur­suit of excel­lence from a few, when the rest of us can’t live up to those stan­dards, is harm­ful self-decep­tion. No one should have to live like that.